Hockey team science wonk Dr. Michael Mann has released his hurricane predictions, just in time to pre-empt NOAA’s planned release of their forecast ,Thursday, May 19, 2011 – 11:30 a.m. ET.
ESSC Scientists make prediction for 2011 North Atlantic Hurricane Season
ESSC Scientist Michael Mann and researcher Michael Kozar have released their prediction for the 2011 North Atlantic hurricane season, which starts on June 1st.
The prediction is for 16.25 +/- 4.0 total named storms, which corresponds to between 12 and 20 storms with a best estimate of 16 named storms. This prediction was made using the statistical model of Sabbatelli and Mann (2007, see PDF here), including the corrections for the historical undercount of events (Mann et al., 2007, see PDF here).
The assumptions behind this forecast are (a) that the current warm sea surface temperture (SST) anomaly (0.90 C from NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch, see SST anomaly image here) in the Main Development Region (MDR) in the North Atlantic persists throughout the 2011 hurricane season and (b) near-neutral conditions in the tropical Pacific during boreal Fall/Winter 2011 (see ENSO predictions here) and climatological mean conditions for the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) in Fall/Winter 2011.
For the first year, Mann and Kozar are testing an alternative model that uses “relative” MDR SST (MDR SST with the average tropical mean SST subtracted) in place of MDR SST. This model predicts a substantially higher 18.86 +/- 4.3 (i.e. between 15 and 23 with a best estimate of 19) total named storms.
In 2007, Mann and Thomas Sabbatelli predicted the exact number of named storms (15) for that season (see 2007 prediction). Mann and Sabbatelli predicted 8 to 15 named storms in 2009, with a lower range of 6 to 13 in the event of a strong El Nino (NINO3 anomaly +1 C or greater, see 2009 prediction). The 2009 season was relatively quiet with 9 named storms partially due to the development of a strong El Nino. Last year, Mann and Kozar predicted between 19 and 28 named storms, with a best estimate of 23 storms (see 2010 prediction). The National Hurricane Center identified 19 named storms during the 2010 Atlantic Hurricane Season (1 June 2010 to 30 November 2010).
References:
Mann, M.E., Sabbatelli, T.A., Neu, U., Evidence for a Modest Undercount Bias in Early Historical Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Counts, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L22707, doi:10.1029/2007GL031781, 2007.
Sabbatelli, T.A., Mann, M.E., The Influence of Climate State Variables on Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Occurrence Rates, J. Geophys. Res., 112, D17114, doi: 10.1029/2007JD008385, 2007.
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We’ll see how it pans out. I’m sure when it is all over we’ll find some inverted sediments someplace.
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When NOAA started their forecast, they timed it to preempt Bill Gray’s hurricane forecast. (The Klotzbach/Gray forecast will be out June 1.)
All pretty silly, since hurricane season always starts with a bunch of hype and then typically nothing happens for the next six weeks. They’ll have an update on Aug 3.
That’s a pretty terse forcast. Klotzbach/Gray will have lots of information backing up the forecast.
I live in Florida. I listen to what the people in Colorado think. Then I listen to what the people in New York think. Then I listen to what people in Bum F***, Egypt, think. Then I shake my ample belly, look at what the AMO, ENSO and such are doing. Then I say to myslelf: “Self: It’s time to buy a small generator. This year in Florida is going to be a lot like what happened to Australia. Big North-South differences in temperature, really big hurricanes.” If I have a choice of places to vacation until November, it’ll be Montana.
Ugh, I hate that smug little smirk.
Analog years help to indicate the approximate number of NS as well as the ENSO conditions. With a neutral state coming from a La Nina….expect more, bigger and closer to the US (regarding landfalls).
OTOH, this is highly dependent on shear conditions and if the prevailing conditions in the MDR create shear (as is the case right now) then systems can just not get going, no matter what the SSTs are.
Predictions are for the clairvoyant or very brave. Mother Nature laughs heartily.
The number of named storms that will occur this year is an integer. There is not a large number of years named 2011. This is not like saying the average woman will have 2.7 children when there hundreds of millions of women where it is clear that the number refers to the number of births divided by the number of women. There is only one year named 2011. Just as a specific woman cannot have a fractional child, a specific year cannot have a fractional named storm.
16.25 ???? He can’t even state a prediction in competent terms.
Climategate 1060002347.txt first part only
From: “Michael E. Mann” <mann@virginia.edu
To: "Jim Salinger" <j.salinger@niwa.co.nz, Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk, Barrie.Pittock@csiro.au, m.hulme@uea.ac.uk, "Neville Nicholls" <n.nicholls@bom.gov.au
Mon, 04 Aug 2003
Cc: n.nicholls@bom.gov.au, Peter.Whetton@csiro.au, Roger.Francey@csiro.au, David.Etheridge@csiro.au, Ian.Smith@csiro.au, Simon.Torok@csiro.au, Willem.Bouma@csiro.au, pachauri@teri.res.in, Greg.Ayers@csiro.au, Rick.Bailey@csiro.au, Graeme.Pearman@csiro.au, mmaccrac@comcast.net, tcrowley@duke.edu, rbradley@geo.umass.edu
Mann writes " Dear Jim,
Thanks for your continued interest and help w/ all this. It's nice to know that our friends
down under are doing their best to fight the misinformation. It is true that the skeptics
twist the truth clockwise rather than counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere?
There was indeed a lot of activity last week. Hans Von Storch's resignation as chief editor
of CR, which I think took a lot of guts, couldn't have come at a better time. It was on the
night before before the notorious "James Inhofe", Chair of the Senate "Environment and
Public Works Committee" attempted to provide a public stage for Willie Soon and David
Legates to peddle their garbage (the Soon & Baliunas junk of course, but also the usual
myths about the satellite record, 1940s-1970s cooling, "co2 is good for us" and "but water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas!").
Fortunately, these two are clowns, neither remotely as sharp as Lindzen or as slick as
Michaels, and it wasn't too difficult to deal with them. Suffice it to say, the event did
*not* go the way Inhofe and the republicans had hoped. "
This is NOT going to become the new language of Science – not – while many friends and me are physically and mentally able to combat it. Do note the number of people who have since come under investigation or are about to. Climategate does not reveal the answers that the Australian contingent gave, but I've not seen them writing to distance themselves from this position of rather nasty contempt.
What is a quarter of a storm? That is prime evidence that he is just making things up. Fractions sound so much more scientific. But it does not make any sense.
I predict 14 named storms. This is based upon a precise guess after a few beers. What will I win? This is a sweepstake right?
I don’t really see the point of this no doubt well-funded work. So Mann can say , “see? I told you so”? Who does it help to look back retrospectively and say “yeah, I told you there would be X amount of storms, give or take a few”?
They can’t predict the storm in time for it to make any difference for the people affected by the few that make landfall. It all seems kind of pointless really. The weather is whatever it will be. Best-guessing how severe it might be over a summer does not appear, to me, to serve any purpose.
I like the Matrix comment, Hoser. Very apt.
Mann and “statistical” in the same sentence is always good for a laugh even if it is something like “Mann does not seem to understand things of a statistical nature.”
Mark
I love predictions like this. You see, I make predictions such as this:
8-10 tropical storms with more chance for them to hit the US and being high intensity.
So I predicted 1-2 major storms with a slight chance of a third.
If you don’t put in a small variance, your prediction means squat. This is especially true for Dr. Mann.
This will of course be my first year with the hurricane predictions…so we shall see. It is like shooting darts as some said unless you cut the variance down a bunch.
Of course, a weakening la nina (that further weakens) would increase the number of storms slightly from the way I was looking at it. But this would probably have no effect on the number of major storms.
Joe Bastardi versus Mann
http://www.weatherbell.com/jb/?p=1920
I wonder if that +/-4 is a range or a standard deviation 😉
sceptical says:
“Seems Dr. Mann’s forecasts in the past have been accurate, as was the hockey stick which has since been supported by numerous other reconstructions. The wonk’s science has been solid.”
Wow. What color is the sky on your planet, sceptical? Because you’re obviously living on an alien world. On Earth the UN/IPCC can no longer use Mann’s debunked hokey stick chart.
To save myself more typing, go here to see Mann’s total deconstruction. Scroll down through the comments, and make up your own mind.
One of the commentators linked to this page, which shows conclusively that Bradley [of Mann et al./MBH98] heavily plagiarized Fritts.
Mark me down for 20, ± 3. I’m also predicting 9 will hit land, ± 4.
Prediction of Hurricanes…such a pointless exercise. How come we don’t make such a big deal about the prediction of tornados? I am sure someone is being paid to predict those every year. I wonder if that person holds animosity towards those who predict hurricanes for their lack of publicity?…I bet the hurricane predictors get their names on the lists of all the hip restaurants while the tornado predictors have to stand outside in line. I predict that this will eventually come to a head and then we will have blood in the streets…well maybe not blood in the streets, but I expect some mean words to be exchanged on the internet.
I say 14 ±9. 10 will make landfall ±7.
Where’s my grant?☺
Eric Anderson says:
May 18, 2011 at 1:08 pm
“In 2007, Mann and Thomas Sabbatelli predicted the exact number of named storms (15) for that season (see 2007 prediction).”
—
What makes this citation completely lame are:
(1) They forgot to add the fudge factor +/- 4 storms – their “predicted” number (15) was a complete fluke, especially since…
(2) 2007 was the year that NOAA decided to name a subtropical storm (!) – remember Andrea? No, I didn’t think so…
(3) Anyone with dice or a deck of cards can guess the the number of “named” storms. What about forecasting the number of major hurricanes and landfalling hurricanes? It gets a little harder. (Remember last year? No landfalling hurricanes…)
More information on the 2007 season here…
The Mann Predicts (again)
The Penn State Earth System Science Center’s (ESSC) news release
doesn’t directly mention any gradual increase in the intensity of
the “storms” other than they will qualify to be in the named
catagory range.
Within the release, here’s no indication of an increase in the number
of named storms or their strength where global warming has played
any acknowledged role.
However, the Geophysical Research Letters paper of Mann,
Sabbatelli, and Neu [2007] attempts to refute the work done in the
Holland and Webster [2007] and Landsea et al [2004] and Landsea
[2005, 2007] papers calculating the historic undercounting of Atlantic
tropical cyclones back to 1900.
See:
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/MSN-GRL07.pdf
In this paper we once again Mike Mann having a go at rewriting
the past, saying that there wasn’t really an undercount going
back in history, no matter how spotty or sparse the observations.
Mann, Sabbatelli, and Neu [2007] picks a whole new statistical
method to look at the storm count as opposed to that used by
the more traditional researchers.
They arrive at a possible undercount of one whole Atlantic
tropical storm per year from 1900 through the pre-WWII decades.
They use that estimate to “prove” that we’re getting numerically
more and physically higher intensity storms now than in previous
decades due to/as a byproduct of anthropogenic global warming.
…much like the various attempts by “Team” players to minimize
the temperature fluctuations during and after the Little Ice Age,
which was part of the “handle” for their statistical hockey stick.
Sadly, for Mann, the actual observations haven’t recently fit into
the increases in Atlantic tropical storm counts or the jump in
intensities his 2007 model suggests.
His Atlantic tropical storm prognostications are now fraught with
caveats dealing with the status of El Nino, ENSO, and the NAO.
These outside factors have no proven connection to AGW… and
are rhetorically useful if the predictions don’t match reality.
He’s selling a used car with a 30 day error band warrantee.
I predict the storms will be named, with a plus or minus .5 standard deviation.
How many tress in Siberia died for this prediction?
R. Shearer says:
May 18, 2011 at 4:26 pm
I worried about that last 1/4 of a hurricane.
slp says:
May 18, 2011 at 6:16 pm
What is a quarter of a storm? That is prime evidence that he is just making things up. Fractions sound so much more scientific. But it does not make any sense.
I wondered how long the comments would continue before the obvious would be noted. While I have trouble with ad hominem in ‘science’, it’s not hard to see how it develops in cases like this. This ‘prediction’ is grandstanding, pure and simple, and worse: that IS a smug and contemptuous expression…clear indication of the depth of corruption all this has sunk to. I’m sorry, but claptrap has become the standard. Mann’s ego is all we are seeing here, nothing of value whatsoever. 0.25 degree, 0.25 of a hurricane, 0.25 of a point for looking so smug. If only we could effectively ignore this stuff.
Oh, and BTW, it’s hailing like the dickens here in Iraq. Weird.
In 2007, Mann and Thomas Sabbatelli predicted the exact number of named storms (15) for that season (see 2007 prediction).
If Mann was so confident in the accuracy of his model then I don’t understand why “No forecast was made in 2008.”…
http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/research/Hurricane2009.html
If they haven figured out what the wind shear will be on the Atlantic, and how much dust will be carried from the Sahara, then they are just playing roulette.
My prediction is there will be about the same number of hurricane of previous decades. ☺
Statisticians: does a 25% +/- error mean anything here? If you took a 5-year running trend for the previous 30 years and simply took the previous years number and did a 25% error bar on it, would you be correct in a Mannly way?
Isn’t such a prediction non-falsifiable? Again?